Team Penske driver Joey Logano loves cheers from fans. He actually doesn’t mind boos, either.
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The reason: whether fans cheer or boo you, at least they’re engaging with you.
But the three-time NASCAR Cup champ has one fear that is one of his most troubling and deepest secrets: not hearing anything anymore. No cheers, no boos, no nothing.
“I dread the day they don’t say anything,” Logano said Saturday at New Hampshire Motor Speedway, where he won the pole for Sunday’s NASCAR Cup playoff race. “That’s the worst part, and I don’t understand it because I don’t know why.
“I wish I understood why a little bit more. I feel like I’m misunderstood a lot of times. I think the industry knows me really well and the kind of person I am. I don’t know if all the fans understand the kind of person I am, or don’t understand how you can race one way and be happy all the other times. It doesn’t add up.
“I guess that’s the only reason I can try to understand it. I don’t understand it completely, but there is a lot of 22 fans out there.”
Logano admittedly smiles a lot, seemingly without a care in the world at times. But other times, fans—or, rather, non-Logano fans—may think he comes across as arrogant or condescending.
If he is the latter two, he has kind of earned the right, as he’s won three of the last seven NASCAR Cup championships—and is hoping to capture his fourth seven weeks from now.
When Logano was brought to the Cup scene by team owner Joe Gibbs, the young kid from Connecticut was only 18 years old. It’s no wonder many NASCAR fans hated him from the jump, feeling he didn’t earn or deserve the ride he had.
Fast forward 17 years, and those haters were so wrong—and Logano proved them wrong for their early umbrage about him, his personality, and his talent.
“As a society, we focus too much on the haters,” Logano said. “We just do that in general, and a lot of times it’s just louder than cheers.
“But when you look at whatever it is—sales in the merch haulers or if you just look in the grandstands—there’s a lot of yellow stuff out there. There’s a lot of Shell/Pennzoil stuff out there. Although we do talk about the haters too much, there’s a lot of 22 fans out there and I’m happy to have every one of them.”
When He’s Back in New Hampshire, Logano is At Home
Every time he returns to New Hampshire Motor Speedway, Logano feels more at home than anywhere else, and with good reason: he literally grew up racing at the one-mile flat track in modifieds, late models, Legends cars, pretty much anything that had four wheels.
And more often than not, Logano would wind up taking the checkered flag. That’s why Gibbs went against normal NASCAR convention and grabbed the kid phenom. While Logano admittedly struggled at JGR, once he was released from the team and signed with Team Penske, Logano became the driver he always hoped—and in some ways, knew—he’d always become.
“It is neat when I do come to Loudon because I am representing, I feel like, everyone who lives around here,” he said. “I feel like you’ve got to root for the hometown guy.
“You’ve got to do that, and it’s fun to enjoy that piece of it. It’s the only time I ever feel a little bit like Dale Jr.—just a little bit. It’s super cool. It’s really neat to be Dale Jr., I’ve learned.”
